The graduate student experience at McGill

Tag: Travel

Summer. The period of the year in which Canada isn’t mostly covered in snow and ice. The period of the year in which you generally need light clothes, and thus you can fit three weeks worth of clothing in your suitcase or backpack, while in every other season you would fit only three days. The… Read More Reflections of a solo traveller

As I wrote in Everyday differences between Italy and Quebec–Part 1 and Part 2, being an international student means being immersed in a different culture, and it’s amazing. In fact, for me it really is a dream come true. And like nightime dreams, sometimes it gets surprising, because no matter how much you prepare before moving to a different… Read More Everyday differences between Italy and Quebec–Part 3

As I wrote in Everyday differences between Italy and Quebec–Part 1, one of my favourite aspects of being an international student is being immersed in a different culture. What is most interesting to me though, is that no matter how much you try to get prepared about your destination country in advance, when you finally move… Read More Everyday differences between Italy and Quebec–Part 2

One of the best parts of being an international student is the exposure to a different culture. I moved from Italy to Quebec more than a year ago, and like any international student I noticed the cold weather, the long Winter, the peculiar–and amazing!–bilingualism, and the differences in the food, the currency and the time… Read More Everyday differences between Italy and Quebec–Part 1

Being a student in Montreal is an amazing experience, and it is definitely pleasant to see that our beloved city was named the world’s best city for students last February. As an international student, I am really glad to live here, but I also feel that my experience wouldn’t be complete without some visits to… Read More Six reasons why an international student should visit Quebec City

One of the best things about my personal graduate life experience is the unprecedented level of travel I’ve been fortunate enough to experience. Of course not everyone has a supervisor like mine that grants vacation time easily or sends me to conferences in exotic locals (Italy, Vancouver, Vermont) but the flexibility inherent in grad school… Read More Off on an adventure…

While travelling for my research, I discovered something interesting: the notion of a «library» (aka, my second home) is not the same thing everywhere. By living in Québec all my life, I had this vision of a library as a place where anybody, adult or kid, can go and consult books. With a card, those… Read More A story of libraries and travels

The topic of this blog is a most unpleasant one. When you are so caught up with work full time AND PhD full time, some things just slip away. Of course, you expect family to have your back. And mine does, with the exception of BRIDEZILLA. Here is the story: my niece, living in Vancouver… Read More When Grad School and Bridezilla are Incommensurate

Two weeks ago, I was lucky enough to find myself chaperoning 13 high school students as they learned about sustainable agriculture, rainforest biodiversity, and cultural diversity in Costa Rica. A very sweet gig. Together we visited organic farms, one of which was in the highlands above the cloud forest. Cows were milked, chickens and trout… Read More When Work, Travel, and Study Intersect